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Convicting the Innocent: Errors of Criminal Justice
(1932)
by Edwin M. Borchard
Case #13
Galindo, Hernandez, Mendival
CALIFORNIA
Everything was quiet in the First National Bank of
Arcadia, California, as the noon hour was drawing to a close on April 5,
1922. No customers were there. The president of the bank, Mr. Dunham, was
standing at the teller's window checking some slips. Cashier Hatterscheid
and Bookkeeper Stover were in the cages working on their accounts. Miss
Montgomery, another bookkeeper, was due back from lunch in a few minutes.
Suddenly bank routine was interrupted by a crisp command – "I mean
business." The speaker was standing at the teller's window of Mr. Dunham,
who understood the real meaning of the words when he glanced up and saw the
barrel of a pistol pointed at him. Two other bandits carrying guns were
covering Hatterscheid and Stover. They, with Mr. Dunham, were ordered to lie
down in a row on the floor, face down. While one bandit stood guard over
them, the other two began their work. At this moment Miss Montgomery
appeared and was immediately ordered to join the others. A customer
(Marshall Dessem) entered the bank and was promptly ordered to join the
ranks on the floor.
In some haste and rather awkwardly, the bandits rifled the money drawer and
the safe. They addressed remarks to each other occasionally, using perfect
English. The whole proceeding took but a few minutes. The loot was stuck
into two canvas bags, whereupon the three bandits quickly retreated through
the front door of the bank and entered a Chevrolet touring car, in which a
fourth man had been waiting at the curb. Mr. Dunham immediately notified the
police and reported that the robbers had taken about S2,800 in currency and
silver, $3,720 in bonds, and $2,700 in American Express travelers' checks.
None of the bandits wore a mask.
The countryside was immediately warned by the police siren at Monrovia, a
few miles east of Arcadia, that criminals were being hunted. A few minutes
later Virgil Barlow, a farmer living several miles south of Arcadia, saw a
Chevrolet speed by his place, plunge into a washout, and disappear. Barlow
got into his own car and went to look for the Chevrolet. He found that it
had been driven about three-quarters of a mile farther on and was standing
unoccupied across the bridge on Chicago Park Island in the San Gabriel
River.
When the car passed his farm he had seen four or five men in it, and he
decided that they might be the men sought by the police who had sounded the
siren. He notified the police at once, and Constable James L. Quipple was
sent to investigate.
He discovered that the radiator of the Chevrolet was still warm. The license
plates had been torn off, and on the rear seat were a number of paper
wrappers, used for wrapping coins. It was found that the car had been
stolen. Neither Barlow nor Quipple could find a trace of the recent
occupants.
An hour after the holdup four Mexicans were arrested while driving through
San Gabriel Valley toward Los Angeles in a Ford. Five guns were found on
them, and in the back seat were two canvas sacks. The Mexicans at first gave
aliases, but were finally identified as Faustino Rivera, Broulio Galindo,
José Hernandez, and Salvador Mendival. They said they had rented the Ford in
Los Angeles that morning and were in San Gabriel to pick oranges. The
revolvers, they said, were for rabbit shooting.
The police doubted their story and took them at once to the bank at Arcadia,
lined them up in front of the bank's employees, and asked if they were the
robbers who had been there an hour before.
Dunham and Marshall Dessem, the customer who had entered the bank during the
holdup, could identify only Rivera. Hatterscheid identified Rivera and
Galindo. Miss Montgomery was positive about Galindo, and Stover said he
recognized Galindo and Hernandez. None of them identified Mendival, so it
was supposed that he was the man who had stayed outside in the car. He was
partially identified by G. A. Cane, a telephone-company employee, who was
working near by. Cane said Mendival's complexion resembled that of the man
he saw sitting in the Chevrolet. The Mexicans' car was examined by the bank
employees, and Hatterscheid claimed that he found a silver dollar on the
back seat.
On further police investigation, it was discovered that Galindo and
Hernandez had been previously convicted of felonies; and several days after
the holdup a scarfpin was taken from Galindo and identified by Miss
Montgomery as one she had seen on one of the bandits.
In May the four were indicted, and on September 27 three of them were
brought to trial – Rivera having died in jail. It was the theory of the
prosecution that the Mexicans had used the Chevrolet to escape from the
bank, driven it to the island, where the Ford had been left, changed cars,
and started back to Los Angeles to return the Ford, which they actually had
rented the morning of the robbery. The two sacks found in the car were
partially identified as those used by the robbers, as were two men's caps
and the five guns.
The defense could find but one alibi witness, and he testified that Galindo
was in San Gabriel at the time of the robbery. Several character witnesses
testified for Mendival. The prosecution was unable to explain how it was
possible for these men who had to testify through an interpreter to use such
fluent English as described and quoted by the bank employees. Neither was
any attempt made to explain what became of the loot, though the defendants
were captured within forty-five minutes of the holdup.
The three men denied any knowledge of the crime and stuck to the story of
their innocent excursion to San Gabriel to pick oranges. Just before the
case was given to the jury, Galindo, through the interpreter, told the
court:
This is an outrage that the people of the bank and the
community want to do to us. It is an outrage, an injustice, because we
haven't done anything. They have caught us with some weapons; we have
delivered them to the officers; they have found some bags that were in the
automobile. They have found these bags in the automobile, they have returned
those bags, those sacks to us that we might put them into our pockets. And
when they arrived at the bank they took us inside and they placed the
weapons out in front of us so that they could be seen, and they asked a
young lady there and a young man, who was also there, if we were the parties
concerned, and the young lady began to look at us and said that I resembled
some one; that I resembled – that I had a white face and that I looked like
the man that was there, and then one of the policemen, a fat man who
testified here yesterday, was standing at the side and nodded to her in an
affirmative way so that she might say that it was I who was there. This is
really an injustice. We haven't committed any crime. That is all.
The jury found all three guilty, and on November 6
Galindo and Hernandez were sentenced to from one year to life and taken to
Folsom. On November 9 Mendival was sent to San Quentin for a term of one to
ten years.
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Soon after the trial a Mr. Jack Thomas appeared at the
office of the Deputy District Attorney, Mr. Burke, and informed him that the
Mexicans had had nothing to do with the Arcadia holdup, and he named as the
guilty men Frank Sullivan, W. F. McMahon, Tom Gray, and Eddie Burns. He told
the Deputy District Attorney that he knew these men and that they had told
him that they were the actual bandits.
Almost simultaneously, these four men happened to be arrested in Los Angeles
on a liquor charge. It was then found that Sullivan had used a United States
bond for the purchase of liquor and that this bond was one of those taken
from the Arcadia bank in the holdup. Six hundred dollars in travelers'
checks stolen from the bank were found buried at a ranch in Artesia. This
had been done by Tom Gray. Gradually a complete chain of evidence was forged
by the authorities linking these four men with the Arcadia crime, although
there was a time early in the investigation when they were released for lack
of evidence.
Finally, however, the story was unraveled, and in 1924 the four were
indicted, together with E. S. McCardia and Sam Fair, who were also
indirectly involved. A former Los Angeles policeman, Hubert Kittle, and
David McGregor were indicted for receiving stolen goods in connection with
the disposal of the travelers' checks under a forged name. Kittle committed
suicide before the trial. The others were convicted.
As soon as the indictments against the real criminals had been brought in,
the District Attorney and Sheriff Treager, who always suspected that a
mistake had been made and continued the investigation, took steps to bring
about a governor's pardon for the Mexicans. On May 2, 1924, Mendival was
pardoned. Hernandez was pardoned May 26, and Galindo, on September 30. They
had served practically two years for a crime of which they were innocent.
They received no compensation.
What became of Galindo and Hernandez is not known. Mendival, who had always
had a good record, discovered that the position he held before his arrest
had been taken by someone else. When he entered prison he had left behind
him a wife and a young baby in the little house he was buying on the
instalment plan. When he returned they had vanished, apparently driven from
their home by poverty.
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This is another case of circumstantial evidence supported
by mistaken identification by the victims. The obvious facts which pointed
to the complete innocence of the men were apparently disregarded by the
police, the prosecution, and the jury, namely, that the men spoke no
English, whereas the robbers spoke perfect English; that they were in a Ford
car, and not in a Chevrolet; and that the loot was not found on them
one-half hour after the crime. Those who commit robbery or theft usually
have the money on them, if caught immediately, or prove to have changed
their normal habits of spending, if apprehended later. The identification
was misguided, as it so often is, by preconceptions and assumptions and by
the keen desire to avenge a crime and fasten it upon someone who might
plausibly have been guilty. There is some indication that the police were
not disinterested or impartial. The fact that two of the men had been in the
toils of the law before undoubtedly counted heavily against them. There were
so many palpable and avoidable slips in the administration of justice in
this case, however, that the state should have offered an indemnity even
without a petition. Mendival's life seems to have been ruined by the ghastly
episode. So far as can be discovered, no indemnity was requested under the
California law from the State Board of Control.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Certified copy of the Information against the defendants dated May 15,
1922.
2. Reporter's transcript of the trial testimony, borrowed through the
courtesy of Theodore Gottsdanker of Los Angeles, Calif.
3. Certified copy of a motion for a new trial on behalf of the defendant
Salvador Mendival.
4. Certified copies of the Commitments of Broulio Galindo and Salvador
Mendival.
5. Certified copies of the decision of the Court of Appeal of the Second
District of California, in the case of People v. Salvador Mendival.
(See 62 Cal. App. Reports 712-716, June 29, 1923.)
6. Photostatic copies of the original pardons granted by Governor Richardson
to Salvador Mendival on May 2, 1924; to José Hernandez on May 26, 1924; and
to Broulio Galindo on September 30, 1924. (See Message of Governor
Richardson regarding Acts of Executive Clemency, January 5, 1925, pp. 3-8,
incl.)
7. Correspondence with Franklin Padan, Esq., Chief Deputy Public Defender,
County of Los Angeles, who represented the defendants Galindo and Hernandez;
and with Theodore Gottsdanker of Los Angeles, who represented Salvador
Mendival.
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